Notes and Editorial Reviews

The Netherlands Blazers, or Wind Ensemble as it used to be,
has been an ambassador for fine wind playing and interesting
contemporary music for donkey’s years. Originally formed in
1959 from members of the leading Dutch orchestras of the day,
it still maintains a tradition of adventurous programming, and
a distinctively resonant sound derived from impeccable intonation
and unity of musical sensitivities and artistic purpose. Guido
Morini was also originally formed in 1959 and, having specialised
in early music with studies in harpsichord and organ, he moved
onRead more through making arrangements to create original compositions
using early music as a source of inspiration. Both Una Odissa
and Una Iliadeare examples of this approach.

Written in collaboration with vocal soloist Marco Beasley, Una
Odissa has as its main source Cafy’s poem Ithaca.
This odyssey is both an inner journey, personified in the figure
of Nobody, who sits on a beach and reflects on past adventures,
as well as an exploration of the emotions and sensations which,
once trivial, now take on a greater significance. The music
is something of a mixture. There is plenty of convincingly arranged
numbers in ancient orchestral style, the winds of the NBE given
the added sonorities and sparkle of a harpsichord. Some numbers
are in more of a romantic Italian ballad style, the Canzone
Dicitencello vuje for instance, which with piano accompaniment
is a love song more in the style of Jacques Brel or Nino Rota.
This kind of sentimentality sits a little uneasily with the
juicy antique orchestrations of other arias, the immediately
following Isola being a case in point. Such emotional
freedom is however very much the ownership of Morini and Beasley,
and the conviction in the performance easily overrides any idiomatic
unrest caused by jumping from Monteverdi to Mantovani, and in
fact points out more the similarities between the old and the
new rather than throwing up muso-semantic barriers.

The percussion of Afio Antico is an intriguing element in this
piece. He doesn’t appear until track 12, but conjures a Storm
at Sea with what sounds like a collection of tambourines
of different sizes and tone. A five minute drum solo wouldn’t
normally be cause for celebration in any context, but the depth
of sound and variety Antico reaches in his improvisation makes
for fascinating listening. The following section In Circe’s
Cave, with a dark presence hamming up fatal spells and incantations
is great fun, ending in a devilish tarantella with a bit of
The Barber of Seville thrown in. With the emotional boxes
ticked in the affecting Sei tu il mio viaggio this is
the kind of drama which covers all of the bases you would expect
from early opera. The up to date ‘amplification’ of simple numbers
like the final Lettera da Itaca serve to heighten this
effect.

Written five years later, Una Iliade is sort-of ‘more
of same but different’. This Iliad begins with the Hilliard
Ensemble in fine voice, the opening section of the Prologo
a mixture of Arvo Pärt and barbershop. Four minutes in and
there are further diversions, the clash of styles more extreme
than in Una Odissea. Marco Beasley’s libretto is “not
the story of the Iliad, but the story of the many stories that
spring from the Iliad... Between them, [a variety of protagonists]
weave a rich tapestry of stories that let audiences experience
episodes from the Iliad from different perspectives.”

These shifting perspectives permeate the score as much as they
do the libretto. We are sometimes hearing something which might
have dropped in from a modern musical, classical music jostles
with sentimental ballads, the occasional whiff of light atonality
and statuesque presence of pre-baroque madrigals. This is something
which I at first found harder to stomach than the more consistently
antique and folksy Una Odissea, and the earlier work
does hang together better as a dramatic whole. There are plenty
of lovely moments of course, and the Hilliard Ensemble always
projects its own special qualities. There are good fun movements
as well, though the infectious contradictory bounce of The
Judgment of Zeus comes as something of a surprise. The NBE
plays out of it skin in these sorts of numbers, even providing
some quite convincing jazz-style playing. In the end this is
where Guido Morini’s strengths lie. He can entertain and wrong-foot
your expectations at the same time, and in this Una Iliade
is eminently successful. Whether it stands as a valuable
contribution to anything in particular only time will tell:
I suspect it doesn’t, but I have no doubt it will be resurrected
as a popular concert work in years to come.

Both of these discs are very well presented with foldout cases
colourful booklets. They are also very well recorded, with audience
noise cropping up fairly inoffensively only in Una Odissea.
I recommend this wholeheartedly to those prepared to explore
a modern view of early musical style combined with some nicely
lyrical Italian songs. Una Iliada is to my mind rather
less effective on the whole, though if you are prepared to throw
intellectual prejudice overboard and allow yourself to be carried
along for a superbly performed ride then you will almost certainly
come out the other side feeling you’ve had very good value for
money. The NBELIVE label’s motto is ‘For those who were
there, or wished they were’, and both of these discs have me
wishing I went out more.

Customer Reviews

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